I contacted T-Mobile customer service yesterday to add the International Unlimited E-Mail plan to my device for my upcoming business trip to Thailand. Before I got of the phone with the CSR she informed me that calls to my voicemail would be charged at the current international roaming rate.

No problem I thought, I'll just turn off forwarding to my voicemail. (I'm originally from Germany and there I always used to be able to either turn off forwarding to my voicemail or forward my calls to any other phone numer.)

After searching the forum I found instructions on how to disable call forwarding to my voicemail, however, after changing all the options to disable forwarding I tried to call my phone and was still forwarded to my voicemail. I tried a couple of times but the forwarding option would always reset itself to forward to my voicemail.

On T-Mobile's website it says to contact customer care to "shut off" voicemail service, however, I don't want to shut it off, I just want to temporarily disable it while I'm abroad.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Andy

__________________Hello, mother. I come bearing a gift. I'll give you a hint. It's in my diaper and it's not a toaster.

I believe you can turn off voicemail form your VM call it and enter into options I believe it is there

or Call TMO care and have them remove VM from the acct for now

Unfortunately that's not the case. I just tried but there's no option to turn off voicemail by actually calling your VM.

It appears that TMO locked the forwarding option on their phones. Is it possible to have this function activated by calling customer service or is the only way to turn off VM by contacting CS and have them remove it from the account?

__________________Hello, mother. I come bearing a gift. I'll give you a hint. It's in my diaper and it's not a toaster.

Okay, so I ended up calling CS. It's not that I don't like calling TMO's CS. Actually they have the friendliest CSR's of them all... (sometimes even too friendly!)

But anyway, I was told that I could forward my phone to another phone number by accessing the options menu within the call log menu (which I initially tried) but the only way to actually turn off voicemail is by calling CS. So I did that and I will have VM reactivate it once I'm stateside again.

By the way, this is off topic, but I think it is nice that T-Mobile informed me about the charges I would incur if I left VM enabled while abroad. I'm not used to companies passing this kind of information along to their customers.

__________________Hello, mother. I come bearing a gift. I'll give you a hint. It's in my diaper and it's not a toaster.

You will only be charged if your phone rings while you're overseas and it autoforwards. If your phone is off you won't be charged. Having your phone off isn't the greatest idea, though!

I was told (and read online) that calls will automatically be forwarded to your voicemail, regardless of whether the phone is off, you "reject" the call, or just don't answer. In either case you will be charged.

To be sure I opted to have VM disabled. Also because, as you already mentioned, it isn't the greatest idea to have the phone off the entire time.

__________________Hello, mother. I come bearing a gift. I'll give you a hint. It's in my diaper and it's not a toaster.

Wrong. If your phone is off then the call is forwarded to voicemail before every reaching you. If your phone is on, and it rings, or if you reject or "ignore" the call then the resulting forward will be charged. If your phone is off, how would the system know where you are??

Wrong. If your phone is off then the call is forwarded to voicemail before every reaching you. If your phone is on, and it rings, or if you reject or "ignore" the call then the resulting forward will be charged. If your phone is off, how would the system know where you are??

Technologically I have no idea how the system would know where I was. Don't get me wrong, I would much rather prefer it if it was the way you describe it, however, all of the research I did indicated that I would be charged if someone left a voicemail while I was roaming internationally, regardless of whether the phone is on or off.

__________________Hello, mother. I come bearing a gift. I'll give you a hint. It's in my diaper and it's not a toaster.

I was told that if you turn your phone on while roaming internationally, it will register with the tower there. then if someome calls it will be automatically transferred to you. if you let the phone register and then turn it off, it can up to an hour before it drops from the tower and you could get charged during that time period.

can't say for sure that is how it works, but that is what TM CS told me.

if you had the phone off and then turned it on, the voicemail notification would appear on your phone, but if you did not retrieve it, I don't think you would be charged.

I always just buy a local SIM and then I don't have to worry about it.

I recently traveled to Canada and had my wireless turned off for most of the trip. I turned on my phone a few times to see if I had voice mail. When I saw the voice mail, I used a land line to call and retrieve the message. I never incurred any international roaming charges for the voice mails I received.

__________________"the trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up" -chuck palahniuk

Okay, so the only way to really make sure not to get charged is either not to turn on the phone at all or to disable VM, right? Since I would be leaving my phone on most of the time, the latter solution is the one for me.

And thanks for the info, at least now I have some idea as to how the system knows where I am and when to charge.

__________________Hello, mother. I come bearing a gift. I'll give you a hint. It's in my diaper and it's not a toaster.